Notre Dame Cathedral holds Easter Mass
PARIS — Four months after its long-awaited reopening, Notre Dame Cathedral welcomed worshippers and tourists alike on Friday for an emotional Easter ceremony centered on the Crown of Thorns, a circular band of branches encased in a golden tube and one of Christianity’s most revered relics.
Notre Dame’s rector, Rev. Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, said this week’s crowd exceeded expectations.
“Before the fire, we saw about 20,000 pilgrims a day,” he said. “Now it’s closer to 30,000. The joy people feel rediscovering the cathedral — you can see it on their faces as they leave.”
Among the worshippers was Marylène Portet, 63, a Paris native who has attended Easter Mass at Notre Dame since childhood.
“It’s not only the cathedral that’s been rebuilt,” she said. “It feels like a link that was missing for so long has been restored too.”
Marianna Janik, 34, visiting from Poland with her husband, said they planned their trip around this moment.
“We simply could not miss this,” she said before kneeling as the relic procession passed. “We came to Mass here 10 years ago. When the fire happened, we were heartbroken. So coming back now to worship Jesus Christ in a cathedral that rose from the ashes — it’s even more powerful.”
Turkey arrests 525 in narcotics operation
ISTANBUL — Turkish police detained 525 suspected drug dealers in dawn operations across the capital, Ankara, Thursday in what Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said was the “biggest narcotics operation” in the country’s history.
The operation involved thousands of police officers, sniffer dogs, drones and helicopters and targeted over 625 addresses, Yerlikaya said. The raids were the result of “technical and physical surveillance” of each suspect over six months, he added.
Yerlikaya said many of those arrested were suspected of being involved in the sale of narcotics “in neighborhoods and streets via internet-based communication platforms.”
“We have shown those poison peddlers once again very clearly: the streets you have entered is a dead end,” Yerlikaya wrote on X.
The Interior Ministry said the crackdown would continue and more detentions would take place in the coming days.
The raids in Turkey follow a large-scale Europe-wide operation on Tuesday which targeted international drug trafficking and money laundering networks. Over 230 people were arrested during the operation led by Europol and police forces in Netherlands, Turkey, Germany, Spain and Belgium, during which $400 million worth of assets were seized.
Countries neighboring US report measles
As the United States struggles to contain a resurgence of measles that has swept through swaths of the Southwest, neighboring countries are responding to their own outbreaks.
Canada has reported more than 730 cases this year, making this one of the worst measles outbreaks in the country since it declared the virus “eliminated” in 1998. Mexico has seen at least 360 measles cases and one death, most of them in the northern state of Chihuahua, according to Mexican health authorities.
Many of the communities grappling with measles have large Mennonite populations that public health officials have linked to outbreaks. The multinational resurgence has concerned epidemiologists, who fear that simultaneous outbreaks near the U.S. border will make it more difficult to contain the virus.
“It’s just a line on the map that separates them — we share air, we share space,” said Lisa Lee, an epidemiologist at Virginia Tech.
Falling vaccination rates have left the United States more vulnerable to the highly contagious virus, she added.
The outbreak in the Southwest shows no signs of slowing. Since late January, the virus has sickened more than 560 people in Texas, 63 people in neighboring New Mexico and a dozen people in Oklahoma.
Iran seeks Russian support over US deal
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran on Friday sought support from Russia over a possible deal with Washington over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, ahead of a second round of talks this weekend in Rome.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he briefed his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, on the first round of talks in Oman last week and praised Russia’s role in Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that led to lifting of sanctions in return for Tehran’s cap on its nuclear activities.
“We are hopeful, and we expect Russia to continue its supportive role in any new agreement,” Araghchi said in a joint news conference with Lavrov in Moscow.
The 2015 nuclear deal collapsed with Trump’s unilateral withdrawal while Iran abandoned all limits on its nuclear program, and enriches uranium to up to 60% purity — near weapons-grade levels of 90%.
Lavrov said Araghchi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday in talks that “emphasized the unprecedented dynamics of (the) political dialogue” between Moscow and Tehran.
